


Ice and Mirrors

by Beanmaster_Pika



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: AU, M/M, Soulmate AU, it doesn't work, just saying there is disappointingly little dino in this story, rated for language, squalo represses the heck out of fate, yamamoto isn't the only rain who represses stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 13:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11403783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beanmaster_Pika/pseuds/Beanmaster_Pika
Summary: Squalo, as a rule, hated mirrors. (Mirror soulmate AU)





	Ice and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theDemonScrypt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theDemonScrypt/gifts).



Squalo, as a rule, hated mirrors.

Dino was always amused by this, teasing him and asking if he were a vampire, to which Squalo would reply with a swift punch to the arm.

Because Squalo, as a rule, hated romance.

It was completely irrational and illogical, and yeah, he could see the problems with _him_ of all people calling something out on that, but that didn’t change the fact that love clouded judgement, weakened people, and set the perfect backdrop for misunderstandings and heinous acts of affection to occur. Hell, his own father, by all accounts worthy of the title _strongest_ , had died protecting his mother, whom followed soon after, leaving Squalo with his unfortunately doting godfather and a gaggle of equally doting godsisters. Therefore, Squalo hated any and all reminders of love. Valentine’s Day was spent locked up indoors; the recently married teacher’s classes were skipped; his second eldest godsister was avoided like the plague; and mirrors? Fuck that shit.

When he was little, and his parents were still alive, he would see snatches of visions; little things, here and there, from a place he didn’t know. It was a despondent sight, to be sure: gaunt, hungry-eyed people and a gray, gray environment. He’d asked his mother, once, why he saw these things. She’d looked stricken, and at once gathered him into her arms and told him he would have to work hard, and bring his soulmate to a place of comfort and happiness far removed from those visions in the mirror.

Since then, Squalo had learned that mirrors would (at certain hours of the day) show glimpses of what one’s soulmate was seeing, and from that inferred that his lived in the slums. Definitely made for a shitty childhood, and Squalo felt for the poor shmuck, he really did, but he still refused to have anything to do with romance. His soulmate was going to have to settle for someone else or be alone, he’d decided at the young, traumatized age of ten, and that was that.

Every now and then, when it was unavoidable, Squalo would see a mirror showing him what had happened to his soulmate. In the years since he first told his mother what he saw, he’d caught sight of an elegant mansion, radiant gardens, spacious halls filled with history and culture, and terrified faces—clearly whoever it was had done rather well for themself and was now in a better place, so there was evidently no need to step in anyway.

(Well, that, or his first one had died and he’d been assigned a new one from a different walk of life, but he’d never heard of that happening before and wasn’t particularly inclined to research such a phenomenon.)

So yeah. He’d thought the only affection of any kind he’d have to deal with were his doting adopted family’s antics and Dino’s surprise hugs (didn’t the idiot ever _learn_? Squalo had beaten him up at least fifty times already) and he’d never fall prey to the disease known as _love_ , and so he went off and killed people and took over a squad of assassins, which was pretty awesome no matter what Dino said.

(They weren’t friends. Shut up. Squalo hated people.)

Life was pretty good, and he was just settling into cruising along on a career of killing when _of course_ something had to go wrong.

See, his new squad of assassins were on the payroll of the Vongola family, and as a result, he (being their head) was expected to attend parties up at the main house. Regrettable, but unavoidable if he wanted the older assassins to stop doubting his ability in venues other than fighting. The mansion tugged at something in his memory, but he dismissed it before he could even think about it—something that should have set his alarm bells off because there was literally only one thing in the world that he repressed. The next thing was the garden—those petunias and dahlias and rose bushes looked awfully familiar, but once again, he repressed it.

The last straw came during the party. He was sipping on a glass of some fizzy drink that probably contained at least a smidgeon of alcohol when he unfortunately turned his head and found himself staring Donna Giglio Nero in the eye.

Donna Giglio Nero was at the _other side of the pavilion_ , talking with someone Squalo couldn’t see and quite frankly didn’t want to see. Horrid realization piled up higher and higher as all the things he repressed clawed their way out of where he’d buried them in his mind and crowed _surprise, motherfucker!_ and he was starting to feel nauseous, oh God his soulmate was in the exact famiglia he worked for, he had to pray that they wouldn’t seek him out or else—

Later, his eyes settled on dark hair and burning, furious red eyes, and he knew he was doomed.

* * *

Squalo, going against everything he stood for, found himself being undeniably drawn to that fury and power. He approached Xanxus, throwing caution to the wind and introducing himself and swearing himself to the other’s service. Xanxus didn’t recognize the same things he had, or maybe he’d chosen not to, and had thrown a glass at his head and called him trash before accepting the Varia and moving into headquarters. Squalo, through great force of will, broke his habits and forced himself to look into mirrors (which made his hair less of a mess than it used to be, at least). As expected, the scenery that would greet him when the visions came were of the dark rooms in the compound, dashing any doubts that might have lingered in his mind. For better or worse, he had found his soulmate.

He had to admit that it wasn’t that bad. He didn’t get butterflies or disgusting warm fuzzies when he interacted with Xanxus, and their conversations were always layered with cold professionalism and a dimly burning fury, which Squalo could appreciate. He didn’t pine for Xanxus, and Xanxus never brought it up, and he even dared to hope that maybe the whole soulmate thing was bullshit and whatever deity reigned had just picked two loners and stuck them together for the hell of it. Life was good (and violent) and settled once more into a stable continuum that was thoroughly lacking in love.

Rinse and repeat, lo and behold, just like the last time, it didn’t last.

Xanxus launched a coup on the Vongola ninth. Squalo didn’t really take issue with this, content to follow whatever this raging inferno of a man had in mind, if there was anything sane going on in his mind at all, and he was more than confident in their chances at actually pulling it off. The ninth and his generation had grown weak, resting on their laurels and enjoying the peace, at least from Squalo’s eyes. Unfortunately, this disaster didn’t work out quite as well as the other one had.

The ninth, as it happened, was in fact not weak, and also not Xanxus’s real father. This admission Squalo heard from the mouth of Xanxus himself while sitting, bloody and beaten, behind a pillar, and brought from his dark pit of a heart a roiling anger and righteous fury—how dare the ninth? How dare he? To lie to Xanxus, to just use him like that, why—

And then came the ice. The ninth, through some arcane manipulation of Will, turned his Flames to Ice and put Xanxus in cryo.

It was jarring, to say the least. Squalo, who heretofore had thought that he hadn’t an ounce of love for his alleged soulmate, felt _cold_. A harsh chill wreathed him from then on, following him everywhere, and he took to wearing extra layers even in the summer, despite the odd looks that garnered him. The Ice, he surmised when he had finally given in and swaddled himself in a cocoon of sweaters and blankets, was hitting him through his connection to Xanxus, probably because of the Will behind it. Which wouldn’t actually have been devastatingly bad, except–

The pining. Oh, God, the _pining_. Squalo hadn’t thought he had it in him to pine, but evidently he did. It was a hollow feeling, and at the same time, full, filled with desperation and missing Xanxus and hating the ninth for sealing him away, and every time Squalo found a vision in the mirror it was pale and hurt and crystalline, feeding the discomfort that grew with each passing day, and he had to resort to picking fights with all the Skies he knew (Dino, for a start, and Donna Giglio Nero for another, both of whom were infuriatingly sympathetic and obliging) to feel warmth from the Flames, ease his grief even the tiniest bit, and he was just starting to become accustomed to the eternal hovering cold when–

_Heat_ flooded him eight years later, and he stood up in the middle of the conference with the squad leaders, ripping off his extra jackets and maybe a few shirts and with what was later described as a deranged gleam in his eyes he bolted for the main house, he knew, he could tell, Xanxus was _back_ or why else would the cold be gone, mirrors he passed in the halls showed distorted images, he had to go faster, faster, faster–

He burst through the doors of the main house, took the staircases four steps at a time, dashed through the halls–

And there was Xanxus. Pale and visibly trying to keep from shivering, and looking frighteningly weak, but it was Xanxus, and before Squalo could stop himself he’d crossed the threshold and grabbed him, _hugged_ him, and whispered hoarsely, “Welcome back.”

**Author's Note:**

> My family doesn't know about my Ao3 account so here have this. Idea/prompt courtesy of the awesome MonekDrau. (Hey dude I finally got the account--)


End file.
